Once a year our school holds an art showcase during which students present what they have been working on. SIS offers a range of creative activities. You can choose between drama classes, music or art. At the showcase we can see what students are doing in those subjects.

The showcase started out in the auditorium in the main building. At the beginning Ms. Anneli, the drama teacher, welcomed everyone and quickly explained how the whole thing is going to look like. Visitors got some time to walk around and look at student’s art pieces or their digital design process journals. If anyone got hungry, they could buy cakes and other treats and a small café. All the profits from the sale would go to A21, an organization dedicated to abolishing slavery all around the world. While the visitors were touring around the room, drama performance was happening on stage. It was an improvisation activity. The aim was to make the other person feel uncomfortable enough to make them leave the stage. Students were interacting with the audience and looking for volunteers to participate in the activity. Unfortunately there weren’t many people willing to join and so the performance ended quite quickly.

After seeing everything in the auditorium, visitors were invited up to the art room where they could see the rest of art exhibition. Works displayed came from students from all MYP grades. The art pieces were what they were working on from the beginning of this year. We could see not only posters, self portraits and figure drawing but also students working on their paintings. Students were also offering a little workshop where anyone who was interested could try out different painting techniques.

Half way through the showcase everyone was invited back to auditorium where drama performance were about to take place. Ms. Anneli informed us that students didn’t have much time to get ready as it is only the beginning of the year, which meant there was going to be some improvisation.  There were several cases where some students couldn’t make it and someone else had to get in on their place, having only one day to learn the script. Nonetheless everyone did a great job. We saw three performances titled: ‘Fans’, ‘Forgotten’ and ‘Gents’. All of them were funny making the audience laugh more than once.

Once the showcase was coming to an end, there was one last act left for us to see. Everyone went down to the music room, where we were about to watch a few performances. A group from grade 8 opened the show with a fragment of The Beatles’s ‘Get Back’. It was followed by a great piano performance of Beethoven by two students from grade 9. Grade 10 offered us four performances. We listened to covers of ‘Heathens’ and ‘Wonderwall’ and a piano duet presenting a melody from a movie titled ‘Your name’. The closing number was a soulful song called ‘Somebody else’ performed by two girls on the piano.

Overall, even though we’re only halfway through the first term, there were a lot of things to see during the whole exhibition. The art room was filled with art, the drama show managed to make people laugh and during the music performances the room was filled with listeners. I can only say that this year’s MYP art showcase was a success.